Sykes Staging Review of Everything
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Start we’re back with a new review the first one of 2022 and it’s going to be rp’s custom training template and the reason that i chose to review this one versus their simple training template and i had a couple of requests for their simple training template i chose this one instead for two reasons, the first is that it’s actually a little bit more tailored towards the individual again it’s their custom one so you actually pick a little bit more what you want to focus on the muscle groups you want to specialize a little bit more so it’s a little bit more custom towards the individual again it’s still a program you buy online it’s not an actual online coach that you’re hiring so it’s not going to be completely tailored to an individual for everything okay but it’s still a step more towards that direction more so than their simple training template will be so i think that’s probably a little bit better choice for most people and then the second reason is that it’s cheaper so it’s actually twenty dollars cheaper than their simple training template so it just honestly makes a little bit more sense to get this one and for me to then review this one because i think it’ll be probably a better choice for most people so now that we got that in the way let’s get right into the review now when you first go on to their website to buy it okay so you have to select whether male or female and then how many days a week you want to train okay so it also talks about this and gives you some hints on the choices you have to make here so based on this again the number of days that you’re going to train for pick the one that you’re going to be the most consistent with the one that you know you can do from week to week to weeks so for me personally i would choose the four days a week that’s the one that i chose and the one that the program spit out for me so once you then choose that it gives you a number of options here now you can choose either a preset one like a whole body or something like that that’ll then spit out and choose what it’s focuses on for you or you can actually customize it this is where the name comes from in terms of what you want to focus on more so you either choose no training meaning there’s no training on that muscle it’s exactly as it sounds you choose growth or specialization now i recommend for at the very least you choose growth and it makes this recommendation as well unless you know there’s a muscle group that you don’t need to focus on at all which for most of you isn’t really going to be the case so with this and as they recommend as well choose growth okay now the specialization one those are the muscle groups that you know you really actually want to focus on the most in this program and as they mention here you only want to choose two or three of those muscle groups at most otherwise the program is going to kind of fall apart and then it’s not going to be so much specialization as it’s just going to be more like an overall all-around type of program and then it’s going to be kind of pointless in the type of program this is so it does again give you hints uh to know what to pick and how to kind of customize this a little bit and if you are a little bit lost you can reach out to them and they’ll help you out okay so for me personally uh i chose to concentrate more on back and shoulders and traps and stuff like that so um again that’s just kind of something that i personally think i could work on a little bit more so that’s what i chose okay and i kind of wanted to see the program that was spit out to do that and honestly it did actually spit out a program that would focus a little bit more on those things and i’ll talk about that in just a minute but once you get the program and purchase it okay you do get some faqs and a brief little uh booklet it’s not really even a booklet it’s like seven pages total on basic information so you get a how-to which explains how to follow the program so that includes how to choose your exercises which i’ll go over in just a minute uh how to follow the program how to determine the weight that you’re going to be using and a number of other things and then there’s another one that goes over a basic introduction of the program itself so why they designed it this way how it overall works all right and then after that you also have a pretty extensive faq sheet as well so pretty much any question that you think you might have should be answered in that list okay but if it’s not again you can always reach out to them and they should be able to answer it now having said that i think the information you get from it is a little honestly lacking so if you compare it to other programs that i’ve reviewed on the channel with a lot of those you get a pretty extensive booklet that goes over all the basic principles and definitions and exercise substitution lists and a number of other things you don’t really get this you get some of that you get the basics but it just still kind of feels like it’s lacking a little bit in that apartment having said that okay any information you think is missing from it you can get from their youtube channel from renaissance peterization’s channel okay and chances are that they go over that specific topic or any information you want and a video on there it’s just a matter of finding it but it still would have been nice to include it exactly in the program directly you know so you have it directly in front of you right here so you’re not going around searching on their youtube channel or anywhere else to get the information okay it should have been kind of right here so it gives you again the basics you’re not going to be lost you should basically have the information that you need and again this is not a beginner program it’s not for novus okay it’s for those who are intermediate to advanced so you should have some pretty good idea on the principles and stuff like that so you should be okay it’s just still would have been nice to have a little bit more information so you can have it again directly here in front of you instead of having to go find it but now that we covered that okay let’s go over the program itself now there’s honestly a lot of similar vibes that i got from this program as they did like their specialization program and their male physique program because the overall programming principles for it is fairly similar to the other ones and you would kind of expect that okay people who design programs the other programs they design are still going to follow the basic principles that they like that they know works so it makes sense in this way okay so like i said i chose the four day a week one okay so the way that they split up is an upper body lower body type split all right and then so you can see right along here i will show you uh day one and then i might go into day two a little bit as well okay i’m not going to show you the whole thing again because of um because of copyright and ethical reasons obviously i’ve mentioned in the past but on this day one here okay so it starts off with chest compound then goes into two back movements followed by a triceps then biceps then ending with two shoulder movements okay perfectly fine right here right and then for those who are thinking shoulders at the end after this it actually does make a little bit uh it does actually make sense okay so in this case you’re not going to be totally exhausted and in fact because you’re having a decent amount separation from that chest compound and your shoulder movements your shoulders shouldn’t be super exhausted at that point okay it’s given a little bit of rest because you’re doing a number of back and then some tricep which depending on the exercise you choose might have a little shoulder into it but again it depends on which one you choose and then some biceps so by the time you get to your shoulders they should still be having plenty of energy to go and do the movement correctly okay so there’s nothing wrong there now the way this works again it’s a similar or almost pretty much identical to the way that you choose your exercises from the other programs that are viewed it gives you a drop down list of exercises to choose from directly okay so like in this one on the chest compound you can choose a number of things like dumbbell bench press uh hammer machine press a number of other ones okay and now in the basic booklet they provide you it does explain here a little bit on how to choose that exercise okay so obviously what you have available at your dim your excuse me at your gym uh or which ones you think you know you respond to best now having said that again because it is an intermediate to advanced type program you should have some idea on which exercises you respond to best all right so you shouldn’t necessarily be guessing here it still would have been nice for them to explain exactly how to choose the exercise that’s best for you okay so they basically say in there that if you’re not entirely sure don’t worry because all these exercises we know do work and there’s truth to that yes okay the exercises they have here are good ones okay they are going to be perfectly fine they should work for you all right but it still would have been nice to have a little you know a little bit more than that in terms of explanations on choosing the specific exercise that you want to do all right and then the other thing i want to mention here is that as you can see like on this first one you have two back movements uh back to back right right after another nothing wrong with that okay uh it does a similar sort of thing like on the lower body day it has two quad movements back to back okay again nothing wrong with that on the back one here specifically that’s probably you can do two rowing movements right after another no issue okay uh what i would have liked to see on this first day is an option to go from a horizontal pull to a vertical pull you don’t really have this option at least i didn’t in the program that i got so it would have been nice to have that choice on that second day there the two quad movements back to back this is where things get a little bit more uh questionable okay so it still gives you that option where you can pick something like a high bar barbell a high bar squat and then the second quad movement you can choose like a front squat so at that choice doesn’t really make any sense at all okay so it would make a lot more sense to go from like a higher bar squat than to a hack squat or leg press or something like that and most of you again should know to make a choice like that okay again this isn’t novus program but having said that the option or possibility to choose something like a hybrid squad to a front squat is still there you’re still able to make that choice so somebody out there may make that choice and that’s not a good choice to make so what they should have done here in this case is that once you choose that first exercise maybe they should have programmed it in some way so that in that drop down menu it changes a little bit so you’re not able to necessarily choose something that’s not going to make a whole lot of sense okay so now to their credit in that little basic information in the booklet there it does talk about how choosing exercises to go back-to-back muscle groups you know don’t choose something that’s gonna not make sense like that okay so don’t do two movements that are gonna be exhaustive with one another okay so it does provide a little bit of an explanation there but again there’s still somebody out there who could end up making that choice that isn’t going to work well or isn’t going to make a whole lot of sense so you know the whole point of programming here is to make it easy for the individual so they know that they’re getting the right choices and that they are getting a good program that logically makes sense right so again it’s not the biggest deal in the world again most of you should know to make the right choices and which ones make sense but it still would have been nice to kind of eliminate it so that possibility isn’t really there but anyway let’s get on to the other part of the programs here which you can see once you choose that exercise it then gives you a link to an instructional video which is great and those videos are well done you shouldn’t be left guessing and again in that little booklet they say if you’re still not entirely sure about your technique hire an actual like power lifting coach or something that to make sure like in the squat that you’re getting your technique down correctly okay so you have actually somebody there to help you out and then the other column is your estimated 10 rep max and this is for all of the exercises and the reason that they do this is that they then use this estimated 10 rm to then calculate the weight that you’re going to use for the five weeks ahead okay so and if i didn’t mention this it’s a five well it’s actually a six week long program okay that’s six week though is a deload week all right so really the program itself is more like five weeks so and i’ll go over that in just a minute how it progresses but anyway once you do that it then calculates the exact weight that you’re going to use in that of all the weeks going forward now this is takes the guesswork out of the weights you not only use but it’s actually very nice to see this way now the way you progress through this as you can see like on this day one it tells you exact sets to do and the number of sets stay exactly the same from week to week and it’s the same on all the other days as well nothing wrong with that there’s no reason for the numbers that you do to necessarily change progressive overload comes in a number of different ways it’s not just increasing weight it can be the numbers that you choose or increasing the number of sets that you do or increasing the number of reps you do okay but in this particular case the sets are staying the same what’s increasing from week to week is the weight that you use and then also the number of reps will change it will progressively overload from week to week and the way that they measure the reps here is in rir reps in reserve okay so in this first week it starts at three or i or well actually not three hours starts at three reps shy of failure actual failure okay and it explains fully on how to measure this now you have to be honest with this and have an actual good guess with this because the programming itself is dependent on you answering this correctly you’re to the best of your ability the other ratings here is not only the rep results that you got but also the soreness rating and then the pump rating and it uses those ratings to then actually change the load and the volume later on in the other weeks so that’s way it’s actually adjusting automatically for you so again if you’re doing an exercise and it just really beat the hell out of you or uh it just you didn’t get the number reps that you thought you were going to you on answer it honestly it will in the following weeks adjust it so that it brings either that weight down a little bit so you can manage it a little bit better or it adjusts the overall volume a little bit for you okay so and it’s kind of a genius it’s a very nice feature and again same sort of thing that i do in the other programs that i review now again like i said though you still has to be honest with this and it does talk about that in that little booklet the information it provides you now as the weeks go on that three reps shy of failure stays the same in the first two weeks and then week three and four goes down to two reps shy of failure and then week five it goes to one rep shy of failure so you are progressing in that way as you go along and then do that six week of deload so either way you’re always making progress even if you stay with the same weight the following week okay your number of reps you’re doing should change it’ll either go up okay like in week one and two here if your weight stays the same you should be getting more reps even if it’s just one or two more it should be staying uh should be changing okay and that’s still progressive overload as the reps shy of failure comes down so like goes from three to two reps shy of failure right then that does mean that your rep range itself probably will actually come down a little bit because at that point the weight you’re using is going to increase okay which makes sense this is how you want to progress okay but don’t freak out if it shoots really really low because again if it does it automatically makes that changes so then you can bring it back up a little bit more in the following week okay but even then again remember the research suggests that anywhere from five to thirty reps that’s a huge range but the research is pretty sound on that as long as you’re in that range and you’re encompassing that range in multiple movements you’re going to make progress on your hypertrophy okay so and it accounts for all that in the program all right so this guys gives you a really good idea of how this overall works it makes sense okay the way that they do uh the way that they programmed all of this all right so you’re not going to be left guessing you’re going to know exactly the weight that you need to use assuming that you do do 10 rm correctly you estimated that correctly and explains how you can do that it does mention here that you don’t have to spend the first week or take a week to then guess what your 10rm to time kind of test it in the gym i see no harm in honestly doing that i think you can do that i’d rather honestly do that and make sure i get a really good actual estimate on this rather than left guessing a little bit you know it says that as long as you’re fairly close it’ll still work just fine which is true but i’d still rather take that actual week where you’ll still maintain what you have but you’ll have a pretty good idea where actual 10rm on these movements are okay and again that’s also assuming that you pick the exercises that work best for you as well all right so overall guys i like the programming a lot no surprise there all right there’s a couple things here that um could be improved a little bit you know just if you have those two moves that are back to back like the two quad movements need to be a little bit careful on exactly what you do choose again most of you should have a good idea what that is and how to make those right choices um but you know and also make sure you are honest in your ratings after each of the programs okay there’s a lot of people out there that honestly are not great at estimating what their actual three reps in reserve is or three or five fail a lot of times people who do a movement and think that they were three reps shy of failure in reality you were more like five or even six okay so actually push yourself until you really truly are at three reps shy of failure with still good technique okay that’s the most important part here right and then you should actually be doing the program just fine it should be calculating for you correctly all right so my overall score for this guys is going to be a nine out of ten i love the program right it’s a great one it can be a little tricky to choose exactly what you want to focus on okay so think carefully with that right and then be careful with the exercises you choose the 10 rm that you choose be truthful and all that the ratings and everything and you should have a fantastic program that should in fact work again repeat the program itself two or three times and they talk about this in that little booklet all right and then you should be seeing results from it because overall it does make a whole lot of sense and i liked it a lot all right i’m just taking the one point off primarily because again the exercise selection here can be a little a little tricky at some points and then also um just needs a little bit more detail in that book in the explanations or the how-to’s uh it just feels like it’s just missing some stuff with it all right so either way that is my review hope you guys found it useful all right i think it’s gonna be a great program for a lot of you all right and then i have plenty of other programs coming up that’s gonna be reviewing so i will see you guys
